This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 05/25/26, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: Acts 2:1-22.
I love the story of Pentecost. The coming of the Holy Spirit. The creation of the church in Jerusalem. That moment when the Holy Spirit gathered the many disciples who were waiting in that upper room as Jesus commanded: praying, fasting, and preparing for what was about to happen. Despite the fact that they weren’t entirely clear on what exactly that “happening” would be.
I’ve always been captivated by how, when the Spirit rushed in and filled the disciples, it caused an enormous ruckus. A rushing wind and tongues of fire. Disciples speaking in languages that they had never heard before, so that the many thousands of devout Jewish pilgrims in the city could each hear the message of Jesus proclaimed in their own native tongues. This event captured the attention of the whole city. The Holy Spirit opened a door for thousands of people to be gathered and become fellow disciples of Jesus that same day.
Given how exhilarating this story is, I’ve been surprised at how un-excited I felt this week as began to think about my sermon. I almost considered preaching on a different passage.
I eventually decided that I didn’t want to switch to a different part of scripture. It felt kind of like cheating. So, I wrestled. And as I’ve wrestled with this passage, I have realized that the problem with the passage is not that I’ve preached on it too many times. It’s also not that there’s something wrong with the passage itself; the text hasn’t lost its luster. The problem with the passage is me. It’s a problem with my own relationship to the text. It’s a problem about how my relationship to the text has changed over time.
When I first read this story as a new Quaker, and as someone who didn’t even quite identify as a Christian yet, I remember being so impressed. The Book of Acts was so inspiring, from start to finish. I was blown away by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and all of the signs of a healthy Spirit-filled community that followed: The fact that they held their possessions in common. They met together daily. They were reaching out into their community and blessing other people and sharing the word of God in both word and deed. This was a story that I wanted to be a part of.
I eventually became a Christian, in part because of the excitement I felt about this vision of a Spirit-filled community being transformed in the image of God. But then I started going to church. As I got involved with real Christian communities, I found many differences between modern day churches and this description from the book of Acts.
The churches I worshipped with often felt like they were going through the motions. Often, they weren’t particularly different from the society around them. They didn’t meet together every day. At best, you’d hope to see someone regularly on Sunday. In terms of outreach to the community, oftentimes these churches had programs, but it was nothing like the spontaneous, organic, Spirit-driven ministry that I saw in the book of Acts. These churches often felt more like clubs than like a new family with Jesus as a brother and God as Father.
I had been taught by the Book of Acts to expect a family that lives together, eats together, prays together, works together, and loves one another in a way that goes beyond anything in my ordinary experience in 21st-century urban America. But that’s not what I found, by and large, in the present-day church.
So, over time, I went from experiencing this story as inspirational and energizing to instead being a source of challenge and even angst. I began asking, “Why aren’t our communities looking like the Christian community in the book of Acts? Why aren’t we meeting together daily, breaking bread together nightly, and reaching out into the community directly? Why aren’t we blessing people’s lives in dramatic ways that don’t just impact those individuals but spread out into the whole city and gather many more into the church? Why aren’t we growing – in numbers and in maturity – just like the church did in the book of Acts?
I’ve maintained both of these senses around the book of Acts: one of inspiration and excitement and encouragement, but also one of challenge and dissatisfaction and angst. But over time, I think that the balance has shifted more and more away from the former and more and more towards the latter. Each year on Pentecost Sunday, each time I read this Scripture, I find myself asking more and more: “What’s wrong with us that we don’t demonstrate the same fruits of the spirit that we see in this story? Why are our churches so different from the one we see in Jerusalem in the book of Acts?”
Today, on Pentecost Sunday, 2026, I feel like the message for me is that I need to change my attitude. I’ve been treating this passage for a long time as a litmus test and as a playbook for how we, as Christian communities today, should be acting. Consciously or unconsciously, I’ve been treating the story of the early church in the book of Acts as a yardstick to measure and judge us with.
I’m realizing that I need to stop using the story this way. Instead, I need to return to it as a story of inspiration, excitement, and encouragement for what God can do in our communities when God chooses to. I need to hear it as an invitation for ordinary people like me and you to be caught up in something so much bigger than ourselves, to be transformed into a people beyond our wildest imagining.
I’m convinced I need to change my attitude, because I’ve seen the fruit of treating the Book of Acts as a criterion rather than an invitation. That fruit is legalism, accusation, and burnout. It’s feeling bad about myself and being disappointed in others. It’s turning the gospel into a new law, rather than a source of hope and liberation. When I find myself relating to the Book of Acts by blaming myself and others for not “performing” as well as we should, it’s a clue to me that I’ve missed the point.
The twelve original apostles were not particularly impressive people. Throughout the gospels, we learn that they almost completely misunderstand Jesus’ ministry and message. Frankly, they are total screw-ups. Does that sound familiar? I don’t know about you, but I sure can relate to this.
And yet, when the Holy Spirit came, the disciples were transformed. They became truly impressive individuals with the power to speak the word boldly, heal people, and become leaders of a movement that will change the world. These unlettered fishermen, former tax collectors, and disarmed freedom fighters became instruments of God’s presence in the world. They became the sons of God, the tabernacle of his presence – the living temple in which God had chosen to dwell, not in stone, but in flesh.
I wouldn’t want to overstate how incompetent and powerless the disciples were before the day of Pentecost. They had agency. They responded and left everything when Jesus called them from their fishing boats and tax booths. They chose to listen to Jesus when he told them to wait in Jerusalem for the coming of power from on high. They didn’t rush into action; they waited on God. They fasted and prayed and dedicated themselves to a process of listening. It was through this process of faithful attending that a door was opened for the Holy Spirit to come and profoundly transform them.
Yet the most important thing here is not what the early church did. It’s not that the apostles took particular actions, or discovered Three Easy Steps To Spiritual Awakening. The really critical piece here is God’s action: sending the Holy Spirit to completely transform their entire situation from one of confusion and ambiguity to one of triumph and clarity.
When I view the story of Acts this way, my orientation begins to shift. I find myself once again getting more inspired and excited. I feel less burdened by the Book of Acts as a measuring stick of what we ought to be doing and how we ought to be measuring up. Instead, I can receive it as an invitation for the church to go deeper than where we are today. He has come that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly.
The Book of Acts is a promise that if we will listen, God will move. Sometimes we need to set aside our regularly scheduled program and listen for what God wants to say to us. That’s something that I know that we can do. We have a rich Quaker tradition that give us tools to do this. We’ve seen how God can move in the silence that we share together, and through the inspired vocal ministry that can emerge from it. We’ve seen the Holy Spirit guide us in our meetings for business. We’ve paid attention to that still, small voice through acts of spiritual discipline and times of personal prayer.
These are things we can choose to do. We have a responsibility to listen attentively.
But we shouldn’t be deceived into imagining that somehow, through our own personal holiness or discipline, we can direct the Holy Spirit to deliver certain outcomes. The reality is entirely the opposite! The outcomes, transformation, and change that we’re going to see in the world will come from God. We can’t produce any of these things on our own, and we can’t predetermine the forms that the Holy Spirit’s ministry will take. These are gifts that we must receive with open hands.
For me, this is a liberation. Realizing that the parts that are my responsibility – the listening, the preparation, the obedience – all of these are things that I can do; they don’t require any special superpowers. They don’t require me to be particularly smart or skilled or intelligent. They just require me to choose to respond to what God is doing. I don’t have to burden myself with a sense of responsibility for everything that God is going to do. I just have to open myself to participate in it and trust that he will work as he wants to.
This is harder than it sounds, of course. For us to really lay aside our agendas, to really hold lightly all of our established patterns and assumptions, isn’t an easy thing to do. It requires a lot of faith. But if we make a choice to set aside our own will and open ourselves up to how God wants to lead us, the promise of Pentecost is available to us. God will get involved. He will change us. He will fill us. He will transform us into the kind of people who are capable of doing God’s work in the world.
God wants to work through each one of us. God wants to work through you in ways that you have never experienced before. God wants to surprise you at the things you are capable of doing. He wants to surprise you with the person you are capable of becoming when he gets involved, when he works within you and through you.
The Holy Spirit is at work in this community. There’s no doubt about that. We’ve all seen it. God wants to show us even more. He wants to do even greater things in us. And he will. All that’s asked of us is that we imitate those first disciples in the Book of Acts – not in what they did after the Spirit descended, but before. We are being called to slow down and listen. We are being invited to open ourselves as a community to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. Prayer. Fasting. Waiting. Expectant attention to what God has in store for us.
“Wait for the promise of the Father. John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Those words weren’t spoken just for the benefit of those disciples in Jerusalem; they are for us, too. Trust in that. Dwell in that. Wait for that.